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Natives put city on notice over sewage

Aboriginal leaders on both sides of the St. Mary's River are taking aim at the city's East End Sewage Treatment Plant.

The Anishinaabeg Joint Commission, a group made up of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Batchewana First Nation, Bay Mills Indian Community and Garden River First Nation, say they want Canadian and U.S. officials to start enforcing clean water regulations at the Ontario Sault's recently-built plant.

"We are calling on regulatory agencies to do their jobs -- we encourage you to exercise your mandate and assume responsibility or we will be taking back jurisdiction to do so ourselves," said Batchewana Chief Dean Sayers, in a release issued last week. "We will be watching."

The Anishinaabeg say the city's plant has had 20 bypasses this year, leading to a rise in E. coli levels and beach closures along the river's beaches and waterfronts.

The group charges those bypasses spilled raw sewage, partially treated sewage, solid waste and trash into the St. Mary's River -- of concern to the Sault Tribe, in particular, which operates a tribal fishery on the river.

Don Elliott, the city's director of engineering services, said the Sault, Ont. plant has not released any raw sewage into the river.

He said the plant is doing only what it was designed to do and not breaking any rules, though he acknowledged the east-end plant bypassed "more frequently this year than it has in the past," including one particularly large bypass on July 18 caused by a mechanical failure, which likely released some man-made sewage debris into the river. But he said the majority of this season's bypasses were small and anything that did go into the river has at least undergone "partial treatment," which in many cases meet standards anyway.

"When the flow gets to a certain point, any good plant is designed to bypass because, if it doesn't, where's the sewage going to go? It's going to fill up and it's going to be running out the doors of the facility, or worse, causing flooding upstream," said Elliott, who noted the Sault, Mich. plant also bypasses into the river.

The city has been involved in a long-standing cross-border dispute over its handling of municipal sewage, with residents and officials on the U.S. side of the river blaming frequent beach closures on the Sault, Ont. sewage system.